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Don't try this at home -- unless you happen to be two out-there guys with a TV show devoted to putting urban myths to the test

Peter Hartlaub| on
October 31, 2003

Adam Savage (left) and Jamie Hyneman (all cq), playfully display one of the chickens they are firing through their cannon (behind the chicken) to test the myth that flying birds can break through windscreens in aircraft. --- Mythbusters is this very cool new program on the Discovery Channel hosted by a Lucasfilm special effects guy named Jamie Hyneman and another fun guy named Adam Savage, who go around trying to test common myths and urban legends. Today (Friday), they're gonna build a cannon and fire a frozen chickens from it, to see if it's possible that they can break windshields.
SCOTT SOMMERDORF / The Chronicle less

Adam Savage (left) and Jamie Hyneman (all cq), playfully display one of the chickens they are firing through their cannon (behind the chicken) to test the myth that flying birds can break through windscreens in ... more

Photo: SCOTT SOMMERDORF

Photo: SCOTT SOMMERDORF

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Adam Savage (left) and Jamie Hyneman (all cq), playfully display one of the chickens they are firing through their cannon (behind the chicken) to test the myth that flying birds can break through windscreens in aircraft. --- Mythbusters is this very cool new program on the Discovery Channel hosted by a Lucasfilm special effects guy named Jamie Hyneman and another fun guy named Adam Savage, who go around trying to test common myths and urban legends. Today (Friday), they're gonna build a cannon and fire a frozen chickens from it, to see if it's possible that they can break windshields.
SCOTT SOMMERDORF / The Chronicle less

Adam Savage (left) and Jamie Hyneman (all cq), playfully display one of the chickens they are firing through their cannon (behind the chicken) to test the myth that flying birds can break through windscreens in ... more

Photo: SCOTT SOMMERDORF

Don't try this at home -- unless you happen to be two out-there guys with a TV show devoted to putting urban myths to the test

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Use a homemade cannon to fire a frozen chicken into a metal plate a few feet from your office, and you're bound to have some regrets the next morning.

Just ask "MythBusters" star Jamie Hyneman, who forgot to close a window directly above his latest experiment and was rewarded with a heavy spackling of partially disintegrated white meat.

Premiering on the Discovery Channel earlier this year and filmed almost entirely in the Bay Area, "MythBusters" takes urban legends and other bizarre hypotheses and puts them to the test. As educational as some of the successful experiments can be, it's the horrible mishaps that have made the show a surprise hit for the network.

Like the time when Savage and Hyneman put a rotting pig in a Corvette to see if the odor could be removed from a car, and the smell was so overpowering it lingered in the alley for weeks. Or the don't-try-this-at-home episode where Hyneman was buried alive in a coffin to test how long he could breathe, and the experiment was cut short when the box started to collapse.

"Sometimes it's a better day if it doesn't work," executive producer Peter Reese said. "Failure is always an option on 'MythBusters.' "

While the show is new, Hyneman and Savage have always acted this way.

Hyneman, who has expertise as a diver and animal wrangler and holds a degree in Russian languages, was a refugee from Colossal Pictures -- a Bay Area studio that did special-effects work for everything from Peter Gabriel videos to the movie "Top Gun." When Colossal collapsed in the 1990s, Hyneman set up his own shop, M5 Industries, in San Francisco, working on toy prototypes and robotic or animatronic projects.

Savage worked for Hyneman, had done some acting (he once played Mr. Whipple's stock boy in a Charmin commercial) and contributed on special- effects teams for the last two "Star Wars" films and the "Matrix" sequels.

"MythBusters" was conceived by Reese, who has temporarily relocated from Australia, along with a small but scrappy crew of camera and sound technicians and production assistants.

A majority of the experiments seem to be inspired by adolescent morbid curiosity -- Is it safe to scuba-dive with silicone implants? What would happen to a poodle if you put it in a microwave? -- and Savage and Reese are the devils perched on the shoulder of the show. They spend much of the time cackling like maniacal 13-year-olds.

Despite his "Road Warrior" shaved-head-and-overgrown-goatee look, Hyneman is the voice of reason. The experienced model builder, whose wife is a science teacher at Encinal High School in Alameda, stresses repeatedly that all the experiments are grounded in education.

Even the chicken launching comes from a complicated myth having to do with birds flying through the cockpit windows of airplanes. The hosts applied rigorous scientific standards, meticulously measuring the velocity and power of the impact -- along with their gleeful notations that chicken parts landed on a truck bumper across the street.

The third star of the show is the crash test dummy Buster, who is looking a little charred midway through the first season.

"He's been fired out of a cannon with 10 pounds of gunpowder," Savage explained. "He's been repeatedly dropped from a crane at 150 feet at Mare Island."

Technically, Buster is on loan from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The MythBusters will have to return what's left of the dummy when they're done, even if he's reduced to a pile of ashes in a bucket.

"And that's pretty much what they'll get back," Hyneman said.

With just about a dozen shows already aired and a few more coming, "MythBusters" has already developed a steady cult following. Ratings started strong and have been rising steadily in the past few weeks.

But the stars are still enjoying relative anonymity at Hyneman's mechanical wonderland in the industrial San Francisco alley off Cesar Chavez Street where much of the show takes place.

Bordered by a housing project, a taxi dispatcher and rows of warehouses, Hyneman's shop is a hard-to-find landmark even with a welded "MythBusters" sign hanging from the front.

Despite the telephone pole-sized cannon and a noise level that requires everyone on the set to wear sound-nullifying earphones, the only spectators for the chicken launch are a few locals who work in the same alley.

"People come out and say, 'What are you doing today?' " Reese said. "We're the local entertainment."

Savage and Hyneman said they won't move no matter how popular the show gets,

While some of the ideas come dangerously close to "Jackass" country, Savage and Hyneman say safety is always a priority. The series is also limited by the network's insurance policy.

So far, out of 39 ideas, there has been only one story the MythBusters couldn't complete. Long story short, it was called Jet Taxi, involved a car getting flipped in jet wash, and the co-hosts were left standing on an airport runway unable to get permission (damage to a plane, not the MythBusters, was the paramount concern).

Savage and Hyneman would also like to test an impregnation myth involving a musket ball that passes through a Civil War soldier's testicle and lands in a woman's uterus, but doubt it will ever be allowed because of the risque content.

Still, they have more than their share of fun, such as the time they got to blow up the inside of a stripped-down airplane after finishing an experiment to measure the effect of a bullet through the window in a pressurized cabin.

Thankfully, that isn't necessary the day after the chicken experiment, when the MythBusters meet up with the Stanford crew team to see if the rowers can get enough speed to pull a water-skier.

They're fortunate enough to get a hollering Great Santini of a coach ("Let's scare him! Let's get his skin tone a little white. Jam! Jam on it!") who does everything except throw a chair in the water to motivate his charges.

Without giving the ending away (the episode airs in early November), the experiment doesn't quite go as planned. And that is the "MythBusters" definition of success.

"There was a moment there where we were sitting in the boat, and Jamie's little bald head was coming out of the water, and I was thinking, 'What are we doing?' " Reese said. "These are the moments we live for."